cleaning the closet {goodbye holiday sweater}

last week i opened up a bit about a flaw i have.  or a struggle.  let's call it a struggle.  no wait, a journey.  i promise you, even a year ago i wouldn't have been able to tell you about it at all.  i had no idea.  so i just want to clarify that i am growing by leaps and bounds {if i do say so myself}.  sometimes i still struggle. i mean continue on my journey.  but as i said, at the core, we are all perfectly made with everything we need.  i wasn't really required to "do" anything.  i just had to stop for a second, listen to my heart, and have faith.

i have wrapped that struggle around me like an ugly holiday sweater.  woven all nice and cozy in 1986.  each strand consisting of a lie i've chosen to believe.  a sweater of the ugliest threads.  rather than get rid of the thing, i patched it repaired it modified it smoothed it cared for it.  over time those threaded lies just got real comfortable.  and i could see it was getting out of hand.  i should have let it go, but it was still comfortable.  i felt defensive towards someone who would say, "i told her to throw away that holiday sweater."  or, "i got rid of my sweater years ago."  or, "i would never wear something so ugly."  i tried to throw it away, but before the trash man came i would dig it back out.  put it on.  oh man...was i ever stuck on that lousy old holiday sweater.

somewhere along the way i decided that i could make something beautiful out of an ugly lie woven sweater.  right, you remember me?  the one who can make anything work?  but the threads started to unravel and i was exposed.  and for a bit i was not quite sure who i was looking at in the mirror.  it looked very much like a person in an unravelling, ugly, holiday sweater the size of a belly shirt.  i wasn't quite ready for what was underneath.   not the lies, but the real stuff.  you know, what God created?

don't think for a minute, as that sweater started unravelling, i didn't wonder where my knitting needles were.  hoping i could just put that sweater right because it would be way easier for me to fix than to let "someone else" do the job.  somehow it just stopped working for me.  comfortable didn't fit the criteria anymore.  and the threads became old yarn.  no longer woven.  no longer comforting.  the unravelling has loosened my heart a bit to find true comfort.  freedom.  unburdened.  uncluttered.  unsmothered.  dare i say, joyous?

standing there naked with my holiday sweater on the ground makes me feel like giggling.  like why didn't i just throw that thing away years ago?  it was so ugly and heavy.  {i told you so....} 

shannan, emily and patty's inspiring words on self esteem....